Kale Chips! Including White Chocolate Strawberry Kale Chips Recipe

A few days ago, I tantalized with this picture of a chocolate-orange raw cream cake (probably better designation than raw cheesecake) that I made for our guests, together with a bunch of kale freshly picked from our garden.

No, I wasn't plating the cake slices on the kale, though that would sure have been pretty.

It was part of my kale chip experimentation! Since I got the dehydrator, and since we raised up a bunch of kale (and I have more baby plants to go in to see if we can beat the shortening days with a second planting), I've been trying some kale chip varieties.

For my first batches, I followed recipes, as much as I ever do that! I made one tray of Averie's chocolate coconut kale chips, and I made four trays with a sauce based on one from the Sunny Raw Kitchen (but heavily tweaked). I thought both were _really_ good, and even more impressive, Phil liked the chocolate ones! He even said he was surprised how much he liked them. But he only ate one or two after all.

Next, I saved some of the fillings from my chocolate-orange cheesecake (or not-cheesecake) and made a tray of each. These are the orange filling/sauce...

And these are the chocolate flavor...

I also made a tray of chocolate-lookalike but not-at-all chocolatey chips with a dressing made of olive oil, soy sauce, rice vinegar, a tiny drop of sesame oil and a teaspoon of almond butter (I was trying to appeal to the kids' tastebuds). I added some chives to the mix to distinguish from the chocolate ones.

Saving the best for last--this is the creation of which I felt proudest.
I present White Chocolate Strawberry Kale Chips!

This was about a cup of coconut milk (could use any nutmilk) with about half a bean's worth of vanilla.
Add maybe a quarter cup of sweetener (e.g. coconut nectar),
a pinch of salt,
two tablespoons melted cacao butter,
and blend well.

Massage this into a bunch of kale really well and then add a half cup of dried or freeze-dried strawberries (I used the latter because that's what I had). It made one tray's worth (about one small bunch of kale). These were seriously delicious with the coconut-white chocolate note, the brittle crunch of the kale and then the more lingering, chewy crunch of the strawberries.

These were generally well-received, although they didn't match up to potato chips for the kids, or for Phil. His conclusion: "They're really good, but they're too kaley." Not much I can do to make them less kaley, since they are kale chips!

I've been a little disappointed by the reception of these kale chips overall. I like them fine, but crunchy, dry food isn't really my thing, and they all have more fat on them than I want to eat right now. So I end up eating them and feeling bad about it, and all the folks who love crunchy things would rather have their potato chips and wheat thins! Can't win them all, I guess...

Have you tried kale chips? Have the 'normal eaters' in your life been converted, or did you have the same experience as I did? (To be fair, there have been a few people who really loved them, but not the majority.)